Delighting in Delicacies and Rest? - Come Discover a Different Taste of Shabbos Delight | Rabbi Asher Perkesh

00:00 Who doesn’t look forward to Shabbos? All week, a Jew waits for Shabbos to arrive. Shabbos Kodesh, a day of rest. The question is: what draws us so strongly to Shabbos? True, it’s a day when we rest and take pleasure. There’s the pleasure of Shabbos, the meals we eat, and the rest we get. But is that what Shabbos is all about? Surely there’s something deeper. Shabbos is a holy day: “You shall observe Shabbos, for it is holy.” Shabbos is a foretaste of the World to Come. But we need to understand exactly how all these things come together. On the one hand, we understand that Shabbos is a day of holiness. On the other hand, what do we do on Shabbos? We don’t work. We’re forbidden to do melachah, we rest, and we enjoy the Shabbos meal. How do all these things express the holiness of Shabbos, and how are they connected? Another point: we know that everyone has an additional soul on Shabbos. The Gemara in Tractate Beitzah says that every Jew has an additional soul on Shabbos. What exactly is its role? The commentators say—Rashi says—that it gives a person the expansiveness of heart to eat and rejoice. What does that mean? Does it mean that the additional soul simply gives us extra capacity to enjoy our food? Surely a soul is something deeper. We know that Shabbos is a day of holiness, a day when we’re meant to devote more time to Torah study and to the service of prayer, as discussed in various books, including works of halachah and Chassidus. But how do all these things come together? How does it all lead to one central point about Shabbos, the holy day of the week? When we look at the Torah, return to the sources, and see exactly what it says about Shabbos, we find in the Ten Commandments: “Remember the Shabbos day to sanctify it. Six days

02:46 you shall do work, but the seventh day is Shabbos to Hashem your G-d.” And as it continues there: “For in six days Hashem made the heavens and the earth, the sea … and rested on the seventh day.” In other words, what happens on Shabbos follows from the fact that Hakadosh Boruch Hu worked for six days to bring creation into being—the six days of creation—and then, on the seventh day, He ceased and rested. It was a day of rest, so we too must do the same, right? A person works hard for six days, and then the seventh day comes, a day of rest. But here, too, there’s a simple question we need to understand. What does “work” mean when we speak of Hakadosh Boruch Hu? He didn’t create the world through physical force, exertion, or effort. As the Torah describes creation, He merely “said.” The world was created through ten utterances. Where is the effort in what Hakadosh Boruch Hu did? And if so, what does it mean that He ceased work and rested on the seventh day, and that we therefore have to do the same? What is the deeper explanation? Today we’ll explore this in depth through the teachings of Chassidus, which give us a deeper understanding of what rest really means. The rest of Shabbos, the cessation of work on Shabbos, comes from a very deep place within a person, something in the soul. It isn’t merely a physical cessation: not doing things, not working. We’re forbidden to violate Shabbos, to work, to light a fire, to do certain things. And we can see that it isn’t specifically hard labor we refrain from. Even the easiest actions, like pressing a button, are forbidden. Someone might say, “On the contrary, work used to be hard. Lighting a fire was hard work. You had to take two stones,

04:59 strike them together, and that was quite an undertaking. Today you press a button.” So why are those actions still forbidden today? We understand that there is something much deeper to the whole subject of melachah on Shabbos. What exactly do Shabbos, ceasing work, resting, and the Shabbos meals mean? How does the physical side of our Shabbos celebration connect with the holiness of Shabbos, with Hakadosh Boruch Hu ceasing work on Shabbos, and with the additional soul we receive then? Let’s begin with a beautiful parable told in the name of the Baal Shem Tov. The Baal Shem Tov tells of a prince, the only son of a king. The king loved him dearly, but the son had grown spoiled, and his behavior was not befitting a prince. He went astray, sinned, and eventually rebelled against his father, the king, to the point that there was no choice but to imprison him. The prince found himself in prison, surrounded by criminals and people of every low sort. He was miserable, broken and crushed. “What am I doing here? The people around me have no idea what life as a king is like, what life in a palace is like, what it means to be a prince. And here I am among the lowest of people.” Then one day, after some weeks had passed, a letter arrived from his father, the king. His father wrote how much he loved him, how much he missed him, and how sorry he was that his son was there. He wanted to be together with him. “I hope and wait for the moment when we can meet again,” he wrote. The prince received the letter, and its love and longing naturally awakened twice as much love in him for his father the king, along with feelings of regret and sorrow. He wanted to dance for joy

07:10 because he was not like the criminals and the other people sitting there in prison. He was a prince; he was someone different. He felt like dancing. But how could he dance? “People will think I’m crazy. They’ll come after me and make my life miserable. What should I do?” So he brought a bottle of spirits, a bottle of vodka, which the people in the prison always enjoyed, and gave them some to drink. Naturally, they got into a mood for dancing and rejoicing, and he began to dance along with them. Of course, they danced because they had been drinking. He danced because he had a letter from his father the king—because he had a king, he had a father. That was the reason for his dance. The Baal Shem Tov says that this is what happens to a Jew on Shabbos. A Jew is, as it were, imprisoned in this world: in a body, with an animal soul and a yetzer hara, surrounded by physicality and material concerns. The soul is literally a part of G-d above. The soul is a prince: “You are children of Hashem your G-d,” as it says in Parshas Re’eh. The soul wants to feel close to the King. But because we become so immersed in worldly life and its vanities, we find ourselves imprisoned by the body and the animal soul. Then Shabbos arrives, and a letter comes from the King. There is a special revelation of G-dliness on Shabbos. That revelation is the additional soul, which gives a Jew the feeling: “Look, Hakadosh Boruch Hu is drawing close to me.” This is the letter from the King that awakens joy and longing in the prince, the feeling: “I am with the King. I am different; I’m not part of all this materialism.” It makes him want to dance. And that is really the essence of Shabbos. But the body doesn’t cooperate. We want the body to share in this joy too, so we give it what it needs: we feed it. Those are the Shabbos meals. And therefore, the Baal Shem Tov says

09:29 The inner point of the Shabbos meal is really the zemiros, the niggunim, and the words of Torah shared at the Shabbos table. Along with giving the body something too, so it can be part of the joy, a Jew can then feel the essential point: the joy of the soul, the love for Hakadosh Boruch Hu that bursts forth on Shabbos. But what is its essence? That was a beautiful analogy and a nice explanation, but how can we understand it more deeply? What exactly happens on Shabbos in the relationship between a Jew and Hakadosh Boruch Hu, unlike all the other days of creation? We can understand it through the analogy of work, since the Torah makes this comparison: “Six days you shall do your work, and on the seventh day you shall rest,” because “in six days Hashem made the heavens and the earth, and on the seventh day He rested and was refreshed.” So let’s look at the physical reality of a person’s life, and from there we’ll understand the spiritual essence of Shabbos. When a person does some kind of work—when he works, acts, makes things, builds things, produces things—we see that his soul’s faculties are involved. After all, a human being is a speaking being, the crown of creation. We’re talking about a person: the most elevated, most wonderful, greatest thing in the world. When a person is in this world and occupies himself with work, there is a kind of lowering, a descent—what Kabbalah calls tzimtzum, a contraction. The soul’s faculties are lofty faculties of a speaking being: intellect, emotions, chochmah, binah, daas, chesed, gevurah. His emotions are lofty emotions, his intellect is a high intellect. And he puts all that into limited, lowly things; he invests it in physical things. So there is a lowering, a descent, and a contraction into things that are utterly beneath a person’s level—things of the inanimate kind. If he needs to construct a building

11:48 out of stones, earth, and water—things belonging to the inanimate realm, or the realms of plants and animals. Occupying oneself with worldly matters, with eating and drinking, with all of a person’s needs, with money and gold—all sorts of things connected to the coarse physical world. So there is a descent and a contraction, and while a person is occupied with that descent and contraction, that is his state; that is where he is. But when a person finishes—and we see this even in everyday life, when someone reaches the end of the day—when he returns to himself, there is a moment when the soul returns. That is the idea of rest. If we look more deeply, rest means the soul’s return to its source. The soul’s faculties, which had been lowered into lowly things, return to their source; they rise back to their original place. The soul returns to itself. And when the soul returns to itself, that is where pleasure is found. It is the pleasure of the soul returning to its original place, of its faculties returning to themselves, to the spring, to the source, to where they belong. That is where a Jew rests. When a person rests, it means his faculties return to themselves, to their source, and there they are renewed and receive fresh strength. These are moments of pleasure, moments when a person is with himself. He can also reflect on everything he has done, and take pleasure in the work he did for a particular purpose. As long as I’m busy and rushing to do things, to act, I don’t have time to take pleasure in what I’m doing. Once I’ve finished the activity, finished the work—I built it, I did it, I created it, I’m done—the moment a person has completed the creation he worked so hard on, and his soul’s faculties return to themselves, that is also the moment when he can step back and look at everything he has done. He sees that everything

13:58 he did fits the purpose for which he invested so much in it. After all, when a person does things, he has a purpose—an inner, spiritual purpose, some reason why he does all that he does. So when that moment of rest arrives, and he can look at everything he has done from a higher, more elevated place, it awakens pleasure in his soul. It is a wonderful pleasure when a person—and this is something unique to human beings—can see that what he does is not just material, physical, technical things. There is something much more to it. I’m not just doing things for no reason. What I do is for a purpose, a loftier purpose, a higher purpose. That is what awakens the pleasure. So when we think about this, let’s take the same example, so to speak, in relation to Hakadosh Boruch Hu. This is what the Torah tells us: “The world was created through ten utterances.” The creation of the world took place through the power of speech. Of course, when speaking of Hakadosh Boruch Hu, we are not talking about physical speech. Speech in the physical sense cannot apply Above; He has neither a body nor the form of a body. So when we say “speech,” we mean contraction. When a person speaks, he has to bring his thoughts down to the level of someone else. I need to explain something to someone; I need to come down from my own level to explain it to someone who doesn’t understand. There is a kind of lowering and descent, a contraction to suit the level of the students, the level of the person to whom I’m conveying the message. Speech is a kind of contraction. So to speak, with regard to Hakadosh Boruch Hu, the power of speech—“He spoke,” “Elokim said, ‘Let there be a firmament’”—the utterance, the ten utterances, refers to the contraction of Divine light in order to create the physical world.

15:58 And each day Hakadosh Boruch Hu created something particular: the creation of light, the creation of the firmament, the creation of the luminaries, the creation of plants, the creation of living creatures. Each day, Hakadosh Boruch Hu creates, bringing about a kind of contraction through which things descend into this physical world. So if we look in Chumash, we’ll see that throughout the six days of creation, from “In the beginning Elokim created” until the end of the world’s creation, the only Divine Name that appears in the Torah is Elokim. The Divine Name Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei does not appear at the beginning of creation. We know that Elokim has the same numerical value as hateva, “nature.” Elokim with a hei, yes? The letters of that word add up to eighty-six. The books of Kabbalah tell us that this is the numerical value of hateva. It is Divine light, of course, but clothed in nature. The Hebrew word for nature, teva, is related to the word for sinking in the sea. When an object sinks into the sea, you see the water; you don’t see the object. The Divine power is submerged within creation. Divine light is there—“Elokim created”; Hakadosh Boruch Hu created the world—but nature conceals it. Nature is a kind of shell, a garment covering the Divine light, and you can’t see what is inside. Then Shabbos arrives. This is the first time the Name appears as the initial letters of words. It is not yet written openly, but its initial letters are already there: “The sixth day. And the heavens were completed.” We all know Kiddush: “The sixth day. And the heavens were completed”—four words whose initial letters spell Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei. There, that shell, that garment of nature, begins to break open, and the Name Yud-Kei-Vav-Kei—the Infinite Light, the Divine light beyond nature—begins to reveal itself within creation. “And Elokim completed.” Chassidus says that vayechal means “was finished”: “And Elokim completed”—the state associated with the Name Elokim came to an end. Now Elokim rises higher. Vayechal, vayechulu—the latter also relates to the word kilayon, the soul’s yearning to be consumed in its source: ascent, elevation, closeness. The Name Elokim, the Divine power found within nature, rises to a higher level, a higher state,

18:23 To the level of the name Havayah, yud-kei-vav-kei, which is above nature. This is the special revelation of Shabbos. The world rises from the level of speech to the level of thought. The Kabbalah texts say that on Shabbos, the world exists on the level of thought, not on the level of speech. As we said earlier, these are all analogies that we can understand from the human soul. Speech is directed to someone else. Speech is for someone outside of me; it makes room for another person. Thought is me with myself. No one else is there. So to speak, if we explain this in terms of Divine light, Hashem’s world of speech is a contraction of Divine light that causes creation to be experienced as a separate existence. That is what happens throughout the week. During the weekdays, the world seems to be a separate existence. That is not the truth, but that is how it feels, because its coming into being from the world of speech makes this world a natural order, something that conceals Divine light. It becomes a physical world, and therefore a Jew living in the world during the six days of creation needs to do work during the week. That is what we do: as Hashem does, so do we. Since throughout the week Hashem, so to speak, contracts Himself to create nature, to create the world, to give life to creation from a place of speech, of Divine contraction, the Jew also contracts himself. He comes down and takes his energies and invests them in earning a living, in work, in all that we do during the weekdays. Then Shabbos arrives, and the worlds—the world—rise to a higher place. The world rises from speech to thought. “And Elokim finished”; “For in six days Hashem made the heavens and the earth and the sea”—and rested. What does “rested” mean? Hashem ceases the contractions, rests from the level of Elokim, from the contractions, and rises to a place of rest. There the great delight Hashem takes in all of creation is revealed. “And Elokim saw

20:44 all that He had made, and behold, it was very good.” “And the heavens were completed”; “And there was evening and there was morning, the sixth day. And the heavens were completed.” The verse is saying that when the sixth day finally arrived and the whole week was complete, Hashem looked at the wonderful creation He had made during the six days of creation. Then came “behold, it was very good”: the delight Hashem takes in creation fulfilling its purpose, in creation becoming a place where Divine light can be revealed through a Jew observing Torah and mitzvos. That great delight Hashem takes brings about the elevation and revelation of the name Havayah, yud-kei-vav-kei. “The sixth day. And the heavens were completed.” Then comes the day of rest and delight. So what is the inner, deeper meaning of rest? Rest is the opposite of contraction. Rest is a return to the source, a return to the essence, a return to a place where there is no struggle, no toil, no turmoil—only the light of Ein Sof. He alone, He and no other. There is nothing besides Him. Hashem is revealed in His full strength, and all the worlds rise to that place. And so the Jew, who is a part of Hashem and Hashem’s only son—when Hashem rises and the worlds rise to this level, the Jew surely stands before Hashem. And when you stand face to face before Hashem, there is no work there. Work, toil, labor—all these belong to the six weekdays. When there is contraction, there is work. When the world returns and you stand before the King of kings, Hakadosh Boruch Hu, you do not work in the King’s presence. When a person is in the King’s realm, outside the King’s house, outside the King’s palace—anywhere in the realm but the King’s palace—he works for the King. He is the King’s servant.

22:57 But what does he accomplish? He works, he builds, he cultivates. He makes it a wonderful realm, a beautiful realm suited to the King’s will. But when the moment comes and the person stands face to face with the King, you do not move a finger in the King’s presence, as the Gemara says. A person stands face to face with the King. That is a moment of self-nullification, and that is what happens on Shabbos. A Jew rises to the level of thought, to the level of cleaving to Hashem, to the inner connection of a Jew standing face to face with Hashem. It is a day of rest, a day when we do not work. On the contrary, it is a day of cleaving to Hashem. Based on what we have just explained, we can understand a Midrash beautifully. There is a Midrash, Midrash Rabbah on Parshas Bereishis, that tells a parable, a story about Rabbi Akiva. Everyone knows that Rabbi Akiva used to debate one of the leading philosophers of his time. His name was Turnus Rufus. He hated the Jews, but he liked debating Rabbi Akiva. One of their debates concerned Shabbos. This non-Jew asked Rabbi Akiva: “I don’t understand. You say you rest on Shabbos because Hashem rested on that day, but look—He doesn’t rest on Shabbos. Rain falls, things grow in the world, and Hashem continues to govern the world in the same way as throughout the week. Where is the rest of Shabbos here?” Rabbi Akiva told him: “Let me give you an analogy. A person may not carry from a private domain to a public domain; he may not carry from a house into the street. But if it is all part of one house, he may carry within the house. You may not carry from one house to another in a courtyard. If there are several houses in a courtyard, you need to make an eruv chatzeiros; otherwise you may not carry from house to house. But if it is all one house belonging to one owner,

25:01 there is no problem. It all belongs to one person.” Rabbi Akiva told him: “Hashem’s entire world is all one private domain, so He is not doing any work.” Now a simple question arises, which all the commentators ask: We all know that there are thirty-nine categories of work forbidden on Shabbos. Carrying from one domain to another is only one of them. So what has he answered? He has only explained carrying between domains: there are not two domains, because it is all one domain, so there is no carrying out. But what about sowing? What about burning, lighting a fire? What about all the other thirty-eight categories of work? They have nothing to do with this. Where did he answer that part of the question? By answering about one category of work, he has not yet explained anything. All sorts of things are still happening in the world. But what does it mean? At the heart of the matter, Rabbi Akiva is explaining something wonderful to Turnus Rufus. He is explaining the foundation of Shabbos, the foundation of Shabbos in relation to the weekdays. As we said earlier, during the week there is a private domain and a public domain. There is Hashem, who is the One of the world, and there is the public domain: the vast world full of multiplicity, a world of speech, a world of multiplicity and many created beings. A Jew is in the public domain, and there he has work to do. The categories of work are acts of creation that we perform within the world. In essence, every act of work is a kind of carrying from one domain to another. In every act of work, we bring things out and develop them. If you look at each kind of work—what is work? It is a way of developing something. Whether it is sowing, growing, building, or kindling, you take something that was hidden within nature and bring it about. You lit a fire, sowed, created, harvested, did

27:07 Some activity of creation, of carrying from one domain to another, from the private domain to the public domain. We take it out into the public domain, into the world. That is our task: to build the world throughout the week. When Shabbos arrives, we are all in the private domain, and that is why there is no work on Shabbos. The entire world is elevated to the private domain. The entire world is elevated to a place where there is only One, the One and Only of the world. A Jew does not perform work because, for Hakadosh Boruch Hu, there is no such thing as going from one domain to another: all of creation is part of the private domain. On the contrary, on Shabbos the worlds do exist—it is not that they do not exist—but they exist within Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s thought, at the level of thought, as part of His oneness, one with Him. So in fact there is no going from one domain to another here, and the acts of work are not acts of work either; they are part of Hakadosh Boruch Hu’s oneness. That is what Shabbos is about. And so, when Shabbos arrives, this is what it means when we say that a Jew has an additional soul on Shabbos. That additional soul is something new, something wondrous. On Shabbos, a new connection awakens in a Jew, a new kind of connection with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. All week, a Jew is a servant of Hashem, but he is out in the king’s country. It is a time for work, a time for action, a time for growth, a time for activity. He is the king’s servant, out in the king’s country, making sure the country is as it should be, moving from one domain to another. There is building to be done, things to do. We have to make the world a dwelling place for Hashem. Shabbos is the day when the king’s son is inside the king’s home, face to face with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. That is—that is the essence of Shabbos. The soul’s cleaving to its source—that is the additional soul. It is the connection of a Jew’s innermost essence, face to face with Hakadosh Boruch Hu, one with Him. “The yechidah for Your oneness”—the yechidah of the soul

29:08 that becomes one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And this is expressed in every aspect and every detail of Shabbos. That is why the Shabbos prayers and the learning on Shabbos, together with the rest of Shabbos and the Shabbos meals, all point in the same direction. They all lead us toward what a Jew awaits throughout the week: Shabbos. “You shall observe Shabbos, for it is holy.” Because, in fact, the whole week is a journey in which a Jew takes the world, elevates it, works with it, refines it, until he reaches the sixth day: “The heavens were completed.” He transforms nature from the name Elokim to the name Havayah, elevates the world, elevates ourselves together with the world, and makes the entire world into the private domain of the One and Only of the world, one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. And we express this in every moment of a Jew’s service on Shabbos. This is what we mean when we say that Shabbos is “Shabbos and rest for everlasting life.” Every Shabbos is a glimmer of that great day, a foretaste of the World to Come, of the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu, the seventh millennium. What will it be like when Moshiach comes? What will the seventh millennium be like—the seventh millennium whose arrival, with the coming of Moshiach Tzidkeinu, we are all awaiting? Then there will be a revelation of G-dliness in the world, and the entire world will become the private domain: “Hashem will be King over all the earth. On that day Hashem will be One and His name One.” It will be the revelation of G-dliness: “The glory of Hashem will be revealed, and all flesh will see that the mouth of Hashem has spoken.” We will all see the light of the Ein Sof openly, within the reality of creation. Every Shabbos is a foretaste of the World to Come. And now we can understand how the rest of Shabbos, the prayers of Shabbos, not—not doing work on Shabbos, and the Shabbos meals are all, in essence, one fundamental point: a Jew’s cleaving to and becoming one with Hakadosh Boruch Hu. For “it is a sign between Me and you.” That is the essential point of Shabbos. May we merit “Shabbos and rest for everlasting life”

31:24 speedily in our days, amen.